Integrating Party 3rd

Tools with
SAP Business
Information Warehouse
Naeem Hashmi
SAP GO-Live Call Chief Technology Officer
Information Frameworks
April 11, 2002
Tel: 603-432-4550
Cell: 603-661-6820
Email: nhashmi@infoframeworks.com
http://infoframeworks.com
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW 1
 Agenda

Anatomy of BI Tools
Data Access Interfaces in SAP BW (Pro and
Cons)
3rd Party Reporting Tools and SAP BW
Challenges in integrating 3rd Party tools with
BW
What SAP or 3rd party vendors can do to
address SAP BW Integration Issues
Q&A

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 Basic Components of 3rd Party BI Tools

A Typical Data Access, Query/ Reporting

and ETL Tool

Metadata Query
Reporting
Mostly OLAP
Database Data Structured Mining
Access Engine Distribution Presentation
Oriented Data Engine
(SQL) Interface

Un-Structured ETL
Data Engine

Data Storage

Tools provide several Data Management layers

Each layer impacts overall performance
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 SAP BW Interfaces

SAP certifies 3rd Party

SAP Portal
tools for individual
Interface/Version OleDB
for OLAP

OLAP BAPI

XML

RRI Interface
RFC,BAPI
SBAPI, TBAPI

DB Connect

ALE/TRFC Source: SAP

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 SAP R/3 & BW 3rd Party BI Tools - Interfaces

Remote Function Calls (RFC)

Business API ( BAPI)
No OLEDB for OLAP BAPIs for SAP R/3

A Typical Data Access, Query

and Reporting Tool

Metadata
Query
Data Reporting
Structured
Access OLAP Distribution Presentation
Data Engine
Interface Mining
Un-Structured Engine
Data
Data Storage

Database Level Access

Source: Business Information Warehouse for SAP
- ODBC, SQL*NET, etc.
by Naeem Hashmi, Prima, 2000

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 Accessing SAP BW - ODBO/BAPI Interface

3rd Party Client Application

MDX

Dataset
OLAP ODBO
ENGINE

Application Server Query Cubes

MOLAP Cube
InfoCube ODS Object
DATABASE SERVER
Source: Business Information Warehouse for SAP by Naeem Hashmi, Prima, 2000

NOTE: Understand that in BW you never access the physical database when
accessing through these APIs.

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 Comparing Data Access Performance
3rd Party OleDB for OLAP Certified Tool -- BEX -- InfoSet Query

Source: Business Information Warehouse for SAP, Naeem Hashmi, Prima 2000

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 3rd Party BI Vendors/Tools BW

Arcplan
Brio Technologies
Business Objects
Cognos
Crystal Decisions
Information Builders
PolyVista

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 3rd Party BI products and their Usage
Vendors and Products
Vendor Product R/3 BW Vendor Product R/3 BW
ArcPlan dynaSight X X ESRI Connect X
Brio Brio.Report, BrioQuery X X IBI WebFOCUS X
Business Objects BusQuery, WebIntell. X MIS Alea, OnVision X
Cognos PowerPlay, Visualizer X SAS Enterprise Guide X
Comshare Decision X Viador E-Portal Suite X
Crystal Decisions Enterprise, Analysis X X PolyVista PolyVista

Product and Intended Audience

MANAGEMENT POWER USERS

ANALYST INDIVIDUAL PRODUCTION
ArcPlan dynaSight Crystal Enterprise
Business Objects IBI WebFOCUS Brio.Report Crystal Enterprise
Cognos Visualizer BusinessQuery
Cognos PowerPlay MIS Alea, Crystal Enterprise IBI
Comshare Decision
Crystal Analysis SAS Enterprise Guide IBI
PolyVista
PolyVista PolyVista

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 Reporting Tool Profile: ArcPlan

Company:
Langenfeld, Germany-based company known for its EIS and custom development
BW20.SCM
environment
Products:
dynaSight, inSight
Certification:
BW-ODB 1.2 inSight 2.35
BW-ODB 2.0 dynaSight 3.0
BW-OBI 2.0 dynaSight 3.0
Strengths:
Custom application development for building specialized views of information
Multiple integration points with SAP R/3 BAPIs and SAP BW ODBO
Application integration with SAP SEM for write-back and SAP R/3 via RFC (NC*)
Weaknesses:
No production reporting or out-of-the-box tool for business users
Small company size and low visibility in North America
* NC = Not Certified

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 Reporting Tool Profile: Brio Technology

Company:
Santa Clara, California-based company known for providing easy-to-use tools
for reporting on RDBMS
Products:
BrioQuery, Brio.QuickView, Brio.Insight, Brio.Report, Brio.Portal, Brio.Impact
Certification:
R/3 4.0, 3.1 Brio.Report for SAP R/3 Release 1.0, BAPIs for Brio.Report
BW-ODB 1.2 Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW
BW-ODB 2.0 Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW
Strengths:
Good SAP R/3 operational reporting and pixel-level formatting
Usability of Brio.Enterprise for manipulation and formatting
Weaknesses:
Separate products, architecture, and user interfaces for SAP R/3 and SAP BW
Limited BW support for embedding hierarchies to drill, pivot, and perform
ranking and top/bottom analysis
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 Reporting Tool Profile: Business Objects
Company:
Paris, France-based company known for its metadata product BusinessObjects
Universe and an integrated user interface for reporting and analysis
Products:
BusinessObjects 5i, WebIntelligence, BusinessQuery, InfoView, InfoView Mobile,
SetAnalyzer, Application Foundation
Certification:
BW-ODB 1.2 BusinessObjects
BW-ODB 2.0 BusinessObjects BW Connect 5.1.1
Strengths:
Integrated reporting and analysis product for BW via ODBO
Specialized query interface, BusinessQuery, for supporting BW
Good reporting and publishing of information to many users
Weaknesses:
Outdated rapid deployment templates (RDT) to R/3 RDBMS via metadata
Separate BusinessQuery product cost on top of base product
No support for SAP R/3 reporting
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 Reporting Tool Profile: Cognos

Company:
Ottawa-based (Ontario, Canada) company known for its best-of-breed tools
Impromptu and PowerPlay
Products:
Impromptu, PowerPlay, Visualizer, Upfront, 4Thought, DecisionStream,
e-Applications for SAP, HeadStart for SAP OLTP (NC*) & BW
Certification:
BW-ODB 1.2 Cognos PPDS ODBO Interface for SAP BW Release 1.0
BW-ODB 2.0 Cognos PPDS ODBO Interface for SAP BW Release 1.0
Strengths:
Established breadth of functionality from ETL, models, reporting & analysis,
and applications
Strong analysis and mobile capabilities via PowerPlay
Good visualization and customization capabilities via Visualizer
Weaknesses:
Limited reporting functionality via PowerPlay
Must build external marts or catalogs via HeadStart for Impromptu
Direct Database Access Against SAP R/3 and BW * NC = Not Certified

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 Reporting Tool Profile: Crystal Decisions
Company:
Vancouver-based (British Columbia, Canada) company known for its Crystal Reports
and easy report creation and distribution
Products:
Crystal Analysis, Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise, Holos Analytic System,
Balanced Scorecard, Customer Profiling, Budgeting, Report Alerts
Crystal Enterprise Solution Kit for mySAP.com Release 2.0 InfoSet Driver, ABAP
Query Driver (Release 3.x and above), Open SQL Driver (Release 3.x and above),
WP-WAI via MiniApps
Certification:
WP-WAI 2.1 Crystal Enterprise Solution Kit for mySAP.com Release 2.0
BW-ODB 2.0 Crystal Enterprise Solution Kit for mySAP.com Release 2.0
BW-ODB 1.2 Seagate Holos 7.0, Info 7.0, Worksheet 7.0, Crystal Reports 7.0
Strengths:
Good integration with mySAP Workplace, SAP R/3, and BW for operational and
enterprise reporting and ad-hoc analysis
Strong operational and BW reporting, Strong Partner with PeopleSofts EPM
Weaknesses:
Minimal direct sales and consulting presence for implementations
Limited interactive analysis for BW coming in Crystal Analysis
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 Reporting Tool Profile: Information Builders
Company:
New York City-based company known for its data integration and reporting
technology for automating large and complex deployments
Products:
WebFOCUS, Business Intelligence Dashboard, Maintain, ReportCaster,
Two-Way Email, Reporting Agent, Power Reporter, Managed Reporter, i-
vision for Financial Analysis, i-vision for HR Analysis, i-vision for Sales and
Distribution Analysis
Certification:
BW-ODB 2.0 WebFOCUS for SAP Release 4.3
Strengths:
Operational and enterprise reporting for SAP R/3 and SAP BW
i-vision reporting solutions for SAP R/3 and BW
Performance and scalability for broad production/enterprise reporting
Weaknesses:
Limited ad-hoc reporting and analysis
Lack of usability for interactive report analysis
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 Vendor/Tool Profile: PolyVista

Company:
Houston -based company a new kid on the block with amazing next
generation of Integrated OLAM, OLAP and Visualization tool to quickly
analyze huge data volumes.
Products:
PolyVista 1.2
Certification:
None
Strengths:
Strategic data analysis data mining
OLAM, OLAP, and Visualization
Performance and scalability to handle vary large data volumes
Weaknesses:
Limited to Microsoft OLAP environment
Not a data access and query tool
No SAP BW API certification
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 Reporting Tools Strengths & Weaknesses
Vendors Strengths
ArcPlan Custom application development
Integration with BAPI and ODBO
Integration with SEM for write-back
Brio Operational reporting for SAP R/3
Technology Usability of Brio.Enterprise for
manipulation and formatting
Business Integrated reporting and analysis
Objects Specialized query interface
Publishing information to users
Cognos Complete ETL, mart, tools
Strong analysis and mobile abilities
Good visualization and customization
Crystal Integration Workplace, BW, R/3
Operational and BW reporting
Decisions
Information Operational and BW reporting
Builders i-vision solutions for R/3 and BW
Scalability and performance
PolyVista Very Strategic and Analytic
Scalability and performance
Dynamic Visualization
Copyrights 2002: Information Frameworks. Naeem Hashmi Integration 3rd Party Tools with SAP BW
Weaknesses
Limited reporting and ad-hoc analysis
Low visibility and small company size
in North America
Separate product for SAP R/3 and BW
Limited interactive analysis for BW
Outdated Rapid deployment template for SAP
Additional cost for BusinessQuery
No SAP R/3 reporting
Limited reporting via PowerPlay
External marts/catalogs needed for reporting
External marts needed for applications
Minimal direct sales and consulting
presence
Limited interactive analysis for BW
Limited ad-hoc reporting
Lack of usability for interactive report
analysis
Limited to Microsoft OLAP Platform
Limited Ad-hoc or production
reporting
17
 SAP Certification and Validation for Integration

The certification and validation process is critical to ensuring the ability

of third-party products to perform SAP R/3 reporting
SAP provides certification and validation at integration points:
Interface Certification: Development and testing of third-party software
vendors interfaces. Available for BW-ODB and WP-WAI*.
Interface Validation: Where certification is not available, special business
and technical validation of third-party software vendors interfaces.
Available for RFC/BAPI.
Leveraging SAP documents to further investigate third-party
integration points and certification and validation:
OLAP BAPI for BW 2.0B April 2000
OLAP ODBO for BW 2.0B 2000
OLAP ODBO for BW 1.2B 1998
Business Object Repository Programming Interface 3.0D & 4.0B 1998
Workplace Certification 2.1 2000 * Workplace - Web Application Integration (WP-WAI)
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 Vendor Certification by SAP System and Interface

Certification Interface Vendors Products/Interface Name SAP

ArcPlan dynaSight 3.0 2.0

Brio Technology Brio.Enterprise for SAP BW 2.0

BW-ODB
Business Objects BW Connect 5.1.1 2.0

Cognos PPDS ODBO for BW Release 1.0 2.0

SAP Comshare Decision 2.5.1 1.2
Business Crystal Decisions Crystal Enterprise mySAP 2.0 2.0
Information
Warehouse Information Builders WebFOCUS for SAP Release 4.3 2.0

MIS OnVision & Alea 3.7 1.2 2.0

SAS Enterprise Guide Release 1.2 2.0

Viador E-Portal Suite 6.0 1.2

BW-OBI* ArcPlan dynaSight 2.0

ESRI ESRI Connect Release 1.0 3.6-4.6

SAP R/3 RFC/BAPI
Brio Technology Brio.Report for SAP R/3 Release 1.0 4.0/3.1

Workplace WP-WAI Crystal Decisions Crystal Enterprise mySAP 2.0 2.1

* Business Information Warehouse - OLAP BAPIs SAP = Latest certification interface tested
(BW-OBI) Information as of 8/15/01

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 Crystal Decisions Business Content
Crystal Reports & BW 3.0x Start_demo.exe

Source: SAP

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 PolyVista
Active
Schema Visualization

OLAM
OLAP

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 3rd Party Tools Integration Issues

Product Architecture and IT Culture

3rd Party BI Tools are designed keeping SQL
Interfaces in mind and not API centric. This is a big
problem.
IT Environment: Companies have established BI
standards based on tools and solution and cant
think beyond DBMS tables.
Immature ODBO Standard
Primarily based on MS OLAP Server. No future
enhancement committee on ODBO specs.
Performance
3rd Party Tools have their own Data Management
Layers to manage entire BI environment while
BW has its own - no pass through capability.
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 3rd Party Tools Integration Issues

Vendors: Cant justify ROI for improving BW

Integration issues BW user community is not
large enough that warrants investment

Vendors not interested in doing more than

certifying their products against BW due to
present SAP and BI tools OEM relationships

SAP Data Access Strategy: API only No

direct database access

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 So what we do now?

Forcing SAP to allow BW DBMS level access is not

going to work
Integrating 3rd Party Tools with BW has to do with
your Information Delivery Architecture rather to force
fit a tool with BW
If BW is in your long term strategy, define a balanced
Information Delivery strategy
Balance Traditional DW and BW usage
Exploit Hub and Spoke Services (BW3.0B) to build
traditional DBMS data marts for 3rd Party tools data access
Work with SAP to enhance Hub& Spoke services to
address 3rd Party data access issues, for example,
flattening of hierarchies.

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 SAP BW - 3rd Party BI Tools:
An Integrated approach

Integrate 3rd Party tools and BW at the Portal

Level through the use of iViews

Exploit SAP Portals unification and

aggregation services to provide a Tool
agnostic information access environment

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 Q&A

Which 3rd Party BI products are you using?

What are the major issues that you are facing

when using these tools against BW?

Who are the end-users?

What do you expect from SAP on 3rd Party BI

tools Integration?

More?
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